Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 400 | Is Critical Race Theory Creeping into Christian Schools? | Guest: Isabel Brown

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Today we're talking education. The Association of Christian Schools International has partnered with UnifiED. UnifiED is a group that seems to have good, Biblical goals, but it's worth exploring the connections the organization seems to have to the tenets of Critical Race Theory. And, in Virginia and Texas, radical curriculums on race and sex are being pushed by the progressive Left, and any parents who have a problem with it are being treated very harshly, as these stories will show. Lastly, we talk to Isabel Brown, a young up-and-coming commentator on the Right. Isabel experienced progressive ideology firsthand at her university and has generated a large platform speaking out against it. You can buy Isabel Brown's book, "Frontlines: Finding My Voice on an American College Campus" through her website! https://www.isabel-brown.com/frontlines-book --- Today's Sponsor: ExpressVPN protects your online data by keeping your online presence anonymous, hiding your IP address. Visit ExpressVPN.com/ALLIE to get an extra 3 months free! --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 399: Rachel Hollis Gets Canceled & a Prayer to Hate White People https://apple.co/31YLsXW Ep 327: The Truth About Critical Race Theory https://apple.co/2PDofbj Ep 308: The Battle for Our Future: America vs. Critical Race Theory | Guest: Christopher Rufo https://apple.co/2Oyj8IT Ep 294: Leaving Critical Race Theory For Biblical Unity | Guest: Monique Duso‪n‬ https://apple.co/39SrjqY --- Show Links: The New York Times: "Can Black Evangelicals Save the Whole Movement?" https://nyti.ms/3wNHsYD The Daily Wire: "Teachers Compile List of Parents Who Question Racial Curriculum, Plot War on Them" https://bit.ly/3wBOf7s The Daily Wire: "In Aftermath of Enemies List, School Committee Pledges to 'Silence the Opposition' https://bit.ly/31YFPJq The Daily Wire: "Graphic Sexual Content Assigned to Texas Students; Dissenting Parents Harassed with Anti-Christian ... 'D**cks'" https://bit.ly/2QcduML -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Thursday, almost through the week. Thank you guys so much for joining. So if you have joined us the previous days in the week, you know this is my last day recording up to date episodes. We have pre-recorded dozens and dozens of episodes for you guys to be able to watch and listen to while I am on maternity leave. Today I am 38. weeks pregnant, which means that I could give birth any time, really, within the next month. I don't have a set date. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I thought that I would give myself some time off and just kind of try to focus on spending that with my family before we have our new edition, which I'm so excited about. But we will still be having the four episodes a week starting next week on Monday. We'll be doing lots of amazing interviews. On Monday, I believe we plan to have an interview with James Coates, who is the pastor that was jailed in Canada, and now they have their church surrounded by like a chain link fence that the government

put up. I mean, it's crazy dystopian madness. And so I think we're going to talk to him next week. I've got Victor Davis Hansen. I've got Ion Hersey Ali. I've got James Lindsay again. I've got Rachel Jancovic. I've got a whole host of people that I will be talking to.

I will also be doing Q&As. I'll also be doing a couple topical episodes. For example, like on the death penalty, I'll be doing KJV onlyism, which you guys have talked to me about or asked me about. And a lot of you guys have also asked me to answer some kind of controversial questions. I will answer those in my Q&As. We'll also be doing, I think, a couple most misused where we take a Bible verse that has been taken out of context and a very pervasive.

way and applied to things that it doesn't actually apply to. And then breaking down what the verse actually means. We've done a few of those in the past. I think I'm going to do a couple of those that you guys will get to hear. So that's going to be like 12 weeks of content that we have been working on pre-recording since January. And so we've been working really hard on this because we care, that you guys get good content and that you guys get to listen through this podcast to some of the smartest people I think in the country through these interviews. just giving us insight into what's going on and giving us equipment on what to do and also encouragement. So I'm just super excited for you. I'm super excited for you to listen to all those

episodes that we've been working on. Today we're going to talk about education. This is a topic in our rotation of topics that we like to talk about a lot, in particular intersectionality and progressivism, infiltrating, and I would say dominating our public school system, but also a lot of private schools and also Christian private schools. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And then I'm also going to interview I'm Isabel Brown. She is also an influencer, if you will, a conservative influencer, commentator, an author of a new book. And she is going to talk about how she stood up for her values at a very liberal university. And so I think it's a great episode or a great interview, rather, to listen to if you are a parent or if you're a college student or if you're

about to be in college and really just any life stage. I think that she's got a lot of good encouragement and practical advice. And so I'm excited for you to listen to that. But first, I got to tell you guys about something that's going on in the Christian schools in the United States, really internationally, because this is an international organization. Now, I'm not trying to throw this organization under the bus. I'm sure that a lot of what they do is, is really wonderful. I don't know everything about this, but I saw this piece of news, and I wanted to dig into it a little bit more. And I wanted to see kind of what was behind it, and maybe if there are any concerns that parents should have, if they send their kids

to a Christian private school that happens to be a part of this organization. The organization is called Association of Christian Schools International, so ACSI. And it has announced their official partnership with Unify Ed. So let's talk about what those two entities are. first and why this actually matters. According to ACSI's website, the Association of Christian Schools International is the largest Protestant educational organization in the world. Since 1978, ACSI has advanced excellence in Christian schools by enhancing the professional and personal development of Christian educators and providing support functions for Christian schools. That includes Administrator Certification, School Accreditation, Legal Legislative Help, Textbook, Publishing,

there are more than 5.5 million students who are a part of these schools that are members of ACSI. There are 3,300 U.S.-based Protestant Christian schools that are a part of ACSI. And so this is a huge organization. It's been around a long time. It's very influential, apparently, in helping develop the training and even in some cases the curriculum for Christian schools and Christian students. And so that's a very influential. why this matters. Like if you send your kid to a Protestant Christian school, there's a good chance that they are a part of ACSI. And like I said, they've probably benefited a lot from that over the years. But now they've announced this partnership with Unify Ed. According to Unify Ed's website,

it's a collection of educators and scholars devoted to engaging culture from a Christ-centered perspective. We support Christian educators in their efforts to engage cross-culturally. Our prayer is to equip is to equip every student and Christian educator with the cultural intelligence to navigate a racially, politically, and ideologically polarized world. Now, that all sounds great. And if you go to Unify Ed's website and you see some of the stuff that they're saying, it sounds good. It actually, you know, it sounds like a true Orthodox Christian, biblical approach to the kind of issues that we're seeing today that are centered. on race. My friend Monique Dusson of a center of biblical unity, though, who I highly recommend you

follow. Go back and listen to the interview that I did with her several months ago. I've also done an interview on her YouTube channel along with her partner Krista, and they are, they're combating a lot of the critical race theory and intersectionality that they see in the church. And they're trying to center conversations about race and about race. racism truly on the Bible. And they do a wonderful job of doing that of calling out lies without shutting down conversations about race. She's actually the first one who brought this to my attention, Monique, because she posted about it that it's actually that this organization, Unified, even though it sounds really good and it uses a lot of the terminology that Christians

are comfortable with, that actually if you dig a little bit deeper, according to the Christian worldview, it's a bit of a problematic organization and some of the ideas that they're going to be pushing are probably going to be more in line with critical race theory and intersectionality than biblical Christianity. And actually, you don't have to dig that far beneath the surface to start having concerns about those things. And if you're listening for the first time and you're like, you need to define your terms. I love that you care about defining terms. I really care about defining terms. But critical race theory and intersectionality have been defined on this podcast many, many, many, many times. And I think that if I define it one more time for my listeners,

they are going to, they're going to throw their phones out the window and just stop. So you can go back. We have several episodes on critical race theory. I'll link to some of them in the description to this podcast. So you can know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not just throwing out a boogeyman. I am not saying that everyone who talks about race or racism or injustice is supporting critical race theory or is a Marxist. That's not the game I play. I only talk about it when it's actually relevant according to the definitions that are assigned to them.

And so you can go back, listen to some of those previous episodes about critical race theory to know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that Unified is probably going to be promoting those kinds of ideas. and in fact, I think we have a very good reason to trust that they will. So the head of Unified is Walter Strickland. He is a professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist University. Now, the New York Times included him in an article not too long ago where they described what kind of ideas he is bringing into the seminary.

So the New York Times says this. radical thinkers have found their way into the citadels of white evangelicalism. Reading the Black Liberation theologian James Cohn, this is the third time we've talked about him on the podcast this week. And we probably haven't talked about James Cohn in a very long time, maybe years. But three times this week, unfortunately, we've brought it up in relation to white evangelicalism. Okay, so Black Liberation Theologian James Cohn helped Mr. Walter Strickland, again, who is the head of Unified.

that is the organization that's partnering with the biggest organization of Christian schools in the country. A theology professor at S-E-B-T-S see how white theologians often ignore the structural sources of earthly suffering. Courses in African-American theology have been on the books at moderate evangelical seminary since the 1970s, but it is significant that Mr. Strickland has brought a thinker like Dr. Cohn into the heart of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. Mr. Strickland spent years studying in majority white evangelical schools where he mastered the idiom of the Christian right. When he speaks to conservative white congregations, he is careful. While Cohn's ideas are on play, I don't mention him by name because I don't want to put unnecessary stumbling blocks in their way. Hmm. Why we're talking about James Cohn and bringing up James Cohn's teaching provide some kind of stumbling block?

That seems a little manipulative. scripture's authority comes first. If I'm able to demonstrate that this black man in front of them has read the Bible, I gain credit with them. Well, that, again, sounds a little manipulative. Now, I wouldn't put it past the New York Times to take a quote out of context, though. And so I can't say that he is meaning to sound manipulative. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt there,

but the quotes that they just provided make it sound like he's talking to talk. But he's almost tricking white evangelicals because he's learned the language to believe in the teachings of Dr. James Cohn, he walked me through the argument he used when he spoke at North Greenville University of Baptist School in Tigerville, South Carolina. He says, there was the fall, and all we do now, so the fall of man, he means, and all we do now is God's vice regents is influenced by that fall. So we're sinners in need of redemption. So too are all the things we create, like law, policy, procedure, practice. That right there is systemic injustice. Before they know it, they're nodding their heads. They're agreeing that systemic injustice and racism are a form of sin.

I get in the back door by walking around the linguistic landmines that are so charged in our cultural climate. I actually think that's a form of manipulation. That's almost a little bit of a bait and switch. That yes, of course, biblical Christians, I know that that sounds repetitive, but nowadays we have to qualify that kind of thing. Of course, believe in the fall. And so they believe that every single person is sinful and therefore they believe that systems are going to be imperfect. But that doesn't make, just because a human being comes up with a law, doesn't make that law inherently unjust. We can go back to the Bible and be inspired by God's definition of justice. And we can write our law and our legislation based on those ideas. And that would mean that those laws are just.

So the idea that necessarily there is systemic racism and there is systemic injustice today just because there are racist individuals and sinful individuals. Well, if that's the case, then there is no argument for fighting against it either because if every system, because it's made of sinful people, is inherently and systemically racist and discriminatory and unjust, then all of our efforts, as fallen, fall in fallible people to try to dismantle those systems is also going to be sinful by that logic. But we understand as Christians that even though the world is fallen, that by God's grace, we can accomplish good things, that not all systems are inherently unjust. Some systems are, but not all systems just because they're made up of sinful people or were created by sinful people are inherently unjust. We have to have a definition of injustice in order to say whether or not something is inherently unjust or inherently racist. Again, just because

they're individual racist in the United States, which of course there are, there's always going to be people that hate other people for a variety of reasons, including the color of your skin, whether you're white, black, brown, or whatever, that doesn't mean necessarily that we have systemic racism in the United States. That's an empirical claim that you have to provide proof for. and disparities between groups does not necessarily prove discrimination. That's what Thomas Sol has argued for a very long time. Disparities don't prove discrimination. They might be caused by discrimination,

but you actually have to have proof in order to be able to say that. And so this particular professor who is preaching the tenets of critical race theory, the core tenet of critical race theories that America is systemically racist, that every single part of the United States and everything in it is systemically racist is the head of this organization that's partnering with this Christian organization. He's also promoting James Cohn. And I'm going to read you once again some quotes from James Cohn, this teacher who he is, who Mr. Strickland is outright promoting at SABTS,

what James Cohn actually believes. And again, why I think it's so problematic that James Cohn is affecting the theology of the person who has then affecting the largest organization of Christian schools in the country. So here are some quotes by James Cohn. This is Black Theology and Black Power, his book that he wrote in 1969. He says that Negro hatred of white people is not pathological, but a healthy human reaction to oppression, insult, and error. He also says in the same book, to be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people. He also wrote in his 1970 book, a black theology of liberation, that black theology, this is

something I think we read yesterday, but in case you didn't listen to yesterday's, here's this quote again, black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer. And we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community. Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love is expressed in black power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. So this so-called theologian has served as an

inspiration for, has served as a resource for the guy who is the head of the diversity and cultural competence training organization Unify Ed that is now partnering with the largest organization of Protestant Christian schools in the country, perhaps in the world. So once again, just stating why this matters. In 1997, James Cohn wrote, and I think this is important because it shows out. actually where his heart and where his beliefs are, this person that is regarded by a lot of progressives to be a wonderful Christian theologian. He said, I still regard Jesus Christ today is the chief focus of my perspective on God, but not to the exclusion of other religious

perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus, okay, but can be found wherever people are empowered to fight for freedom. So this is very similar to what Ibrax-Kin de-s said when he said Jesus is not a savior from sin. He's a liberator from systems. I'm paraphrasing. And this is not Orthodox Christianity. It's not. It's a belief system, but it's not Orthodox Christianity. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts. And so he sees, I would guess, Jesus Christ as the Messiah dying for our sin is an abstract. concept. As Malcolm X put it, I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Anytime I have

to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion. So it's really about your political activism, your political position. And if Jesus or any religion can serve as a means to your political ends, then it's useful. But if it's not, then you throw it out. In James Cohn's words, you better kill it. So again, this is the theological framework. Apparently, this professor is operating from when he is teaching, but he is not doing it in an overt way because he understands that James Cohn is a stumbling block if he uses his name when he is talking to white evangelicals.

And there's a reason why he's a stumbling block because he preaches heresy. And so I think that it's important for parents who are students in these students in these Christian schools who are a part of this organization and is being trained by Unify Ed to just understand the perspective of where it's coming from. Now, you might look at the training and you might say, you know, this is actually completely biblical. It's just preaching the gospel. I have a hard time believing that. But this is actually very useful training. This is actually very good. Maybe that's true. Maybe there are enough Christ following. in this organization, that this training that these Christian schools are going to be using is

actually beneficial. But remember, CRT is not something where you can take the meat and spit out the bones. It's an entire worldview, as we just read. It's an entire theological framework. And so it's not enough just to say, okay, we'll take parts of it. Like we'll take white fragility. We'll take parts about white supremacy being pervasive in the United States. And we'll apply that, but we'll push out, you know, the stuff that we don't like about the white devils and the white people all being bad in us having to kill God if he is not part of the black agenda. We'll just throw that part out. That doesn't work. It comes part and parcel. It's all together. And if it is not, from a Christian perspective, the gospel and equality that we have as image

bearers, equality that we have as those who have been bought by the blood of Christ, if that is not the driving force, if that is not the core of the curriculum and the training, if it's not just good theological, good biblical training, then you do have to question if it is a productive thing to be instilled and implemented in a Christian organization like ACSI. So I say all that to say, be on the lookout. Like be on the lookout as a parent of a child at a Christian school for this kind of stuff because we talk a lot about the dangers of this coming into public school. And yes, it's going to come into public school a lot more quickly. I don't care if you live in the most conservative suburb county in Alabama. This stuff is coming for your school in a much more overt

way. And not just this, but something that is called comprehensive sex education, which maybe would sound good. But again, it's the responsibility of the parents and of the family to teach sex and sexuality to your kids. And as Thomas Sol has talked about before, like, you don't need 12 years of a kid's life to teach them about sex and sexuality. It really doesn't take that long to do that. But what they're doing through CSE is a form of perverse left-wing indoctrination about gender and sexuality and morality that parents really need to be aware of. That's going to be pushed a lot more strongly and a lot more quickly and soon at all public schools. And you're going to very powerless to do anything about it unless you speak up before it gets there or unless you speak up

as soon as you see it at least because the fact of the matter is parents don't have a whole lot of power over the public school system. The government dies. The teachers unions do. They hold a whole lot of power. But at the end of the day, your taxes are going to be funding these teacher salaries and this curriculum no matter what you do, even if you take your kids out of the school. And so, So parents really have to come together with a unified and loud voice speaking out against this kind of thing and going to their state representative, their state legislators, and saying, look, we don't need to be teaching this kind of divisive rhetoric, this divisive ideology that punishes kids and categorizes kids by the color of their skin in our schools.

And as well as we're not going, we shouldn't be pushing this kind of perverse sex education either. It is degenerating, degrading to a child's mind should have no place in our education system. But also if you're at a private school, you do have a lot more power. You do have a lot more influence because if a bunch of parents come together at a private school that's teaching stuff that you don't agree with and, you know, a hundred of those parents say, we're going to leave and we're going to make sure that everyone in this community knows that this is what the kind, this is the kind of stuff that you guys are teaching our kids, well, that school has a profit incentive to respond. And that's why profit incentives, by the way, can be very good,

because it gives the people who are contributing to that profit, who are paying money, power to be able to actually make change. So just because we send our kids, if you send your kids to a private Christian school, doesn't mean that we can check out as parents. It doesn't guarantee that they're not going to be indoctrinated with stuff. It doesn't guarantee that they're going to be Christians. I think I do encourage, as I've said before, taking your kids out of public school now, I do not think that it's the fight that they need to be fighting. I think that it's very beneficial for them to get as Christian of a worldview throughout their entire day as they possibly can. Remember, secularism and secular education is not neutral. It's got its

own set of rules and regulations and morals that contradict the Christian worldview. But that doesn't mean that we can take a step back and look away. and not worry about what our kids are learning at private school, at private school as well. We've got a bunch of other education stories of just craziness and this intersectionality and critical race theory seeping through at what are public schools too, especially in college.

There's a video, according to the college fix, of a young woman who says, she does this video saying, man, I hate white people. And apparently this is not the first time this has happened. and this is a law student at the University of Miami. And other students have said, like, look, this is making me uncomfortable. This is racist.

This is not good. This really concerns me if this is going to lead to violence or it just, it doesn't make me feel safe. The university has done nothing about it. Of course, if the races were reversed, if this was a different situation with a different racial makeup, of course, the university would have already expelled this person. But we tolerate certain forms of hate towards certain kinds of people. people because as a culture, we've already bought into this lie that the only people who can be mean

or hateful or who have the power to actually make their prejudice count is white people. That's a form of partiality that God hates. That's a form of partiality that leads to injustice and resentment. And it's not going to make life better whether you're black, white, or brown. And we should have no part of it. There have been people who have been pushing back against this kind of thing in curriculum, both in public schools, private schools, college, and elementary and grade schools. In Loudoun County in Virginia, where critical race theory is being pushed very hard in the public

school system. There's an organization, Virginia Project and Parents, against a critical theory that has been pushing back against this. And then the teachers actually compiled the list of these parents who are a part of and who they deem a problem and pushing back and opposing this kind of curriculum. They compiled a list of them and they plot war on them. They plotted war on them according to The Daily Wire. It says a group of current and former teachers and others in Loudoun County, Virginia,

compiled a lengthy list of parents suspected of disagreeing with school system actions, including its teaching of controversial racial concepts with a stated purpose in part to infiltrate. use hackers to silence parents' communications and expose them publicly. So this is what is happening in the public school system in Loudoun County, Virginia. So Jen Durham, who is a local mother, she began what turned into a massive thread, writing, this is a call for volunteers to combat the anti-CRT activities of this organization, parents against critical theory. the stop L-C-P or stop-L-C-S-C-R-T website and the like,

looking for folks who are interested in volunteering to organize, lead, execute, and donate regarding to the following points, gather information about these people, infiltrate their groups, spread information about these people publicly, find a way to gather donations to push back against them. And so teachers and people in the, local community in Loudoun County are making sure that parents who speak up against the divisiveness and the destruction, the deleterious effects of critical race theory in schools are exposed.

This is the high cost of being dissent when it comes to communistic ideas. This is what communists do. This is what they've always done. They shame you. They threaten you. They docks you. They make your life as difficult as possible until you finally agree. Do you want to be? Do you want to be on that side. No. And the only way to keep pushing back against these communistic bullies is to keep saying something and to double down and triple down and to get more voices on your side. This kind of bullying and harassment is also happening to parents in Austin, Texas, who are concerned about the sexual content of some of the books that their students as young as 13 are being forced to read. So this is from the Daily Wire. Graphic sexual content

assigned to Texas students dissenting parents harassed with anti-Christian, I guess, well, it says a bad word, and I can't say that, with anti-Christian messages and being called these derogatory names. The article says students as young as 13 in Leander Independent School District in Austin, Texas, have been exposed to graphic sexual content as part of their coursework. And just a warning, if you've got kids in the car, you probably don't want them to hear what I'm about to say, including graphic verbal depictions of gang rape and other sexual acts. And so they do actually link to in this article examples of what these kids are being forced to read as young as 13. I do not recommend clicking on that. I got through one and a half sentences

and I had to stop. I mean, I was traumatized as a 29-year-old. I can't imagine a 13-year-old whose mind is so fresh, just starting to learn about anything that has to do with the world of sexuality, being forced to read some of this stuff, the violent, violating, incestuous, pedophilic stuff that these kids are being forced to read. The Daily Wire says much of the content is too explicit to post on this site, but the Teach Parental Rights Coalition provides excerpts, and that's true. again, just take my word for it. Take the Daily Wires word for it. This is stuff that should never be. This should never be allowed in schools. It shouldn't be forced in schools. Here's the deal.

If a child cannot, if a minor cannot consent to sex, which they cannot, they are not developmentally able to do that. It doesn't matter what the perpetrator, what the victimizer says about their minor victim. A minor cannot consent. to sex. If a minor cannot consent to sex, they also cannot consent to being forced to read graphic depictions of sex. And we're talking, we're talking pedophile depictions, gang rape was depicted, incest was depicted in some of these excerpts of this book. These are 13-year-olds being forced to read this. This is a form of psychological rape. Okay? If children cannot, which they can't, consent to sex, then children also cannot consent to being forced to read this kind of pornography. And so anyone, any teacher, any administrator, any parent in the community who tries to defend this kind of stuff, you're sick. I'm not going to be morally relativistic about it.

I'm not going to be nuanced about it. I'm not going to pretend like this is gray. Like maybe there's some benefit to your seventh grader learning about gang rape. I'm not going to play that game. If you don't have a problem with this as a parent as a teacher as an administrator, you're sick. There's something wrong. There's something wrong in here with you, not just in your mind, but also probably in your heart. So the article goes on to say, according to one parent who spoke to the daily wire on condition of anonymity, their concerns were not received with tolerance by some involved in the process. Proponents of the pornographic content, allegedly, including teachers and parents, it's always important, allegedly, lashed out at the concerned parents calling them religious,

zealots, bigots, and racists, of course, the go-to. The harassment did not into name-calling. There were also different items that were being sent to them. Some of the people speaking out have received anonymous cardboard. I'm trying, I know that you guys listen with kids. And so I'm trying to be careful about the things that they say. I will just say that there were depictions of genitalia that were sent to these Christians and to these parents who were speaking out about this, allegedly. And on them, they had like calling these parents the C word.

Others have received allegedly dead animals on their porches for speaking out about this. Photographs of the phallic cardboard cutouts were provided to the daily wire by a woman who is speaking out about this. And other other terrible depictions were also very blasphemous and sexually explicit in nature that were being sent to these parents. And so you've got a whole bunch of freaking perverts, powerful perverts that very much wants to infiltrate children's curriculum in the United States. And if parents don't push back against the bullies that are trying to silence you, I promise you it does not end well. Doesn't end well for your family. doesn't end well for society. The time is gone. It's done. It's expired. It did a long time ago for you to sit

back, for us to sit back as parents and for us to just trust the institutions to do as they will with our kids. That is not the way to go. It's not good stewardship. It's not good parenting. You're not being a good community member. You're not being a good citizen. That's not representative of Christianity. as a steward of your child's mind and your child's life. It is absolutely your responsibility to loudly speak up against the degrading, against the demolishing, disastrous, destructive curriculum that your kids might be learning, whether it's about sexuality, whether it's about wrong concepts about race. It's not wrong to learn about race and racial injustice, but wrong concepts about,

race and intersectionality and things like that, it is 100% your obligation to make sure that you're educated about this stuff, know what your child is learning, know what your child is reading, and in the face of these perverted bullies that we are seeing in this particular story, to keep on talking. To keep on talking about it. I mean, this is just so disturbing. This is grooming, by the way.

It's grooming. To make a child, a 13-year-old child or middle school, high school, whatever, read about pedophilia, read about incest, read about rape. That is grooming. You are purposely trying to normalize that kind of degeneracy in a child's mind so that they're more accepting of it by the times that they're an adult or so that they're more accepting of it when a predator comes along and tries to tell them that whatever they're doing to them is okay. It's grooming. And if you, as a parent, if any of these freaking bullies, any of these teachers, any of these administrators don't have a problem with this kind of curriculum, this kind of literature again,

and the name of art, in the name of critical thinking, and the name of nuance, which it doesn't add anything to any of those categories, then you got a problem. You got a problem. It's time for some self-assessment. And you, as a parent who does have a problem with this, it's your responsibility to speak out about it. As kindly, respectfully, and as logically as you possibly can, as we say on this podcast, it's your responsibility to raise a ruckus, a raise a respectful ruckus about this kind of stuff on behalf of your kids. Now, thankfully, there are so many parents that raise their kids

so wonderfully with the right worldview, help them critically think, help them be able to rhetorically argue for their position and shield them, not in a completely insulating way, but in a righteous and in a responsible way from the craziness that is in these worldly perverted ideologies. And then that equips them when they go off to college or when they go to the real world to be able to stand strong. Like that's our responsibility is not to just make scared and insulated kids, but to make strong adults. Like that is what we want. our kids are going to be adults so much longer than they're going to be kids. We want them to be able to confront this kind of madness.

And so we don't just shield them from it, but we also equip them to deal with it in the right way at the right time, in the right context. And Isabel Brown, who I'm about to talk to, is a great example of someone who was equipped in that way before she went to college. And by the time she went to college and was at this left wing university, she had the bravery and also the equipment to be able to stand up for the things that she believed in. And I think you're going to get a lot out of the conversation that I am about to have with her. Isabel, thank you so much for joining us.

Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? I sure can, Allie. And thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure to be on this program and just very surreal for me as I listened to your podcast almost every single time it came out when I was a college student. And I just love now getting the privilege to work with so many great people like you. For those that don't know who I am, my name is Isabel Brown, and I am a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, which essentially means I get to represent what all of our TPSA student activists

across the country get to do every day on national television, radio, print media, and speaking across the country as well. And you just wrote a book, correct? I sure did. Yes, my debut book, Frontlines, finding my voice on an American college campus, came out about a month ago, and told the story of my college journey as a student campus activist with Turning Point USA and really expands beyond that to the state of affairs of America's college campuses in 2021. And talk a little bit about being a student activist on a college campus. When did you graduate from college? I graduated from Colorado State University in 2019.

And for those that are familiar at all with my story, I never expected to be working in politics or communications or for a large organization like Turning Point USA. after graduation, my dream was actually to become a physician. And I was pursuing my degree in biomedical sciences, but found even in my classes like anatomy and chemistry and organic chemistry and physiology, we were talking a lot more about those leftist indoctrination talking points you hear a lot about on the news and on this podcast than the objective truth of science. And as an outspoken conservative, I received unbelievable and unprecedented hate in my community for sharing. my values. Death threats, threats of violence and rape, my address being doxed online to the

apartment that I lived in right off campus. And of course, all the labels conservatives get these days from Nazi and white supremacists to homophobic and transphobic too. And tell us about some of the pushback that you were giving. How did you go about that? What were you saying? How did you get the courage to speak up? All of it. You know, I was first exposed to the level the left is willing to go to silence opposition of thought in my classes in those courses that are supposed to be graded in multiple choice format and true and false answers, things that we have proven in the hard sciences versus what we know is living outside of reality or in fantasy. But even in my physiology classes, for example, we learned that there are two sets of chromosomes, X, X and X, Y, but gender is

a social construct. Or we would work through all of the tiny things that have to happen in the womb, every miracle for a baby to make it to nine months of viability, only to be told later that a baby in the mother's womb was a fetus and termination of a pregnancy had nothing to do with ending a unique biological life. I realized that even my grades and my GPA were going to be penalized if I started speaking out against what my professors were saying and advocating for truth, and that, of course, grew exponentially outside of the class as well when it came to the backlash and the anger of the left for doing so, especially in student government. and in student employment positions I held on campus. But looking around, I realized that if I wasn't going to advocate for conservative ideas, it was very likely no one else in my community would. So I just told myself to embrace a few seconds of courage at a time, especially through starting a turning point USA chapter and inviting conservative speakers to campus for the first time in many, many years to my campus in Colorado at Colorado State University. And of course, all that name calling was very painful. I lost many friendships.

and relationships with professors and mentors. And it was difficult to get the death threats and threats of violence and many things that conservative students today deal with on a daily basis. But it was also so rewarding and courageous to experience being that first person willing to accept that backlash to advocate for something that a lot of people around campus were feeling, but people weren't willing to say. Did you ever have one-on-one conversations with your professors

about the disagreements that you had about some of the things that they were teaching? I sure did very frequently, especially when I got that backlash in class and got an F on a paper, for example, for advocating for more privatization of health care, which you wouldn't think is a very politically controversial topic. But especially being involved in student government, I developed very deep relationships with many of the top top people in my school's administration from the university president and chancellor to all of the vice presidents.

And it was incredibly disappointing for me having meeting. with these people once or twice a week and hearing that the goal of our university wasn't education or opening people's minds to new perspectives, but rather it was to ensure that we would be a social justice institution. They wanted my school CSU to be the next Mizoo and they were much more focused on diversity and leftism

and the indoctrination side of things than they were education, which was very frustrating. I think one of the things that's so dangerous about these schools being so subjective in their teaching and obviously so political in their teaching at the expense of objective truth is that a lot of the people who graduate from these colleges, they assume that someone who disagrees with them must just not be educated. Of course, that's a pushback that I get. If I say, you know, actually gender and sex really are interchangeable and life begins in the womb and there's really not a philosophical backing to try to separate very very.

in the existence of human life in order to justify the killing of a baby, whatever kind of argument that you make that's based on history that's based on actual science, the people who graduate from these kinds of colleges, they say, well, you're not educated. What they mean is you didn't take the same classes that they did. You didn't get pushed the same indoctrination that they did. And I think a lot of students, it seems like, go to the same classes you did. And it never occurs to them to push back on their professors. It never occurs to them to even question what their professors are saying because, hey, these people are in charge and you feel smart because you're in college.

Like, why do you think that is? Why do you think you felt, okay, this isn't right? And I'm going to push back on this. And I'm going to think a little bit harder about this. But why the vast majority, it seems, of college students have no desire or no courage to do so. You know, I think I'm going to answer the first part of your question separately. And then I'll address sort of why I took a different approach. But I think historically in America, we've never had a reason to question the motives of our professors and the academic experts in our society. They have been the experts. They've been the people with the most knowledge available to give to the next generation in any of these subjects, but particularly non-political ones like anatomy and physiology and physics and chemistry, things that have never had anything to do with the changing political narrative of the day until very recently in our country.

We've lost the ability as a society, and particularly with our generations, millennials and Gen Z, to talk about two things, even if it's around the dinner table with our family or with our friends over a cup of coffee. And if you ask any under 30 something in America, what two subjects you should always avoid talking about, they will almost robotically answer politics and religion. So we're having 18-year-olds show up to their college campus with no foundation of value-based discussions, even in their own home whatsoever. And naturally they'll accept whatever the professor says as fact or as truth because they have no reason to question the motives of the expert in the room, the supposed expert being their professor. I really took a different approach given my upbringing in faith. I was raised in the Catholic Church, but I've always been taught from a very young age to understand and filter out the difference between fact and fiction, between what we know is truth and what we know is a lie. And I don't even think you need a religious foundation or background to do that or an experience in faith. Truth, we like to say, has a ring to it.

You can recognize it when you hear it. And as soon as you're willing to start questioning the narrative in your classes or even outside of a college campus on social media, in your workplace, in a corporate boardroom or the halls of Congress, that's when you start to say, hang on a second, that doesn't sound right to me. Something in my gut is wrong there. And that's what led me down the path to question what my professors are saying. But all of this being said, why does all of this matter? Yes, college campuses are insane leftist echo chambers. We've known this for a long time. But I think we've abandoned a call to action for so long in this country to reach young people where they are in a language and a method that they understand social media and campus activism being important hallmarks of that pursuit. Instead, we've abandoned that call and we've let young people listen to everything on their college campuses completely unchecked and take what the expertise. in the room had to say as fact. We saw an entire generation take these ideas from their college campus with them after graduation and impact the real world to look a lot like a college campus. And today, the insane calls of leftism are in the halls of Congress, corporate boardrooms,

and literally burning down the streets of our cities in America to make way for the next great thing, socialism. Yes, for sure. I think that you make such a good point about so many kids growing up in an environment where they were told that religion and politics are controversial. It's not really something that we need to care about or think about. And parents, I think of that generation, some of them were kind of convinced that the right thing to do is to just let your child figure it out and think what they want to think. And, oh, I'm not going to indoctrinate my child or tell my child what they should think about faith or truth or politics or anything like that.

I'll let them find their own way. well, the problem is, is that teachers and professors do not feel that way. They absolutely believe that it is their moral imperative to indoctrinate your child with their worldview, with their point of view. So while parents, some parents are so busy trying to be as neutral as possible while their child is growing up, they get to college and you meet a lot of professors who are not neutral at all. And so, I mean, that's just kind of how our brain works.

We're looking to latch on to something that is substantive. If parents don't give kids that foundation, something that is substantive, shape their worldview with faith, shape their worldview with what is true, they're going to be searching for that because that's what the human heart does. We search for truth. We search for something bigger than us. And if you're told that that's social justice, you're going to latch on to that. So I would just say to the parents who are listening to this, it's your obligation to prepare

your child for a college so that they're willing to do something that, Isabel did and stand up for views that are really unpopular in the face of threats. Do you have any final encouragement for people who may be in your position now in college, but they don't know where to begin. They don't know how to stand up. And they're quite honestly, they're scared about the risks that come with it. I sure do. I wrote this book as really an opportunity to reach out to other young people,

especially on college campuses, who are feeling incredibly isolated and alone in being a conservative and deciding whether. or not to take that first step. And unexpectedly, a lot of the reviews that have come in afterwards have said that this should be required reading for parents getting ready to send their children to college or high school seniors getting ready to move into their dorms to understand the environment of college campuses today. I never thought about it in that lens, but I think it's so empowering to look at the state of affairs today on America's college campuses and not be afraid of what's awaiting you with this insane leftist indoctrination, but empowered to do something about it from day one. If you show up on

your college campus or you're already a student there and you make a resolution decision to yourself that you are going to go out and do a very simple thing every day in the classroom and student government and your sorority meeting, tell the truth. You are going to impact and inspire so many people in your college community and beyond. And ultimately, Ali, I think that's what you and I get to do every day. That's what our jobs essentially boil down to. It's not all that complicated and we get to reach a lot of people all at once. But young people on college campuses get to reach their peers, their friends, their family members, the people that sit next to them in class and truly have the opportunity to change

so many minds by just being bold enough to tell the truth. So if you're deciding whether or not to do that right now, we're with you, we're cheering you on. You are never alone in your Christian or conservative beliefs and walking towards objective truth. And you are part of an incredibly exciting generation in Gen Z who's ultimately going to save America in my opinion. Wow. Well, thank you so much for that encouragement. If you could just remind everyone where they can find you and where they can buy your book. My book is called Frontlines, finding my voice on an American college campus. You can buy it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's very easy to get your copy. And you can follow me on social media at the Isabel

Brown. Awesome. Thank you so much, Isabel. Awesome. Thanks, Sally. Okay, guys. Thank you. you so much for listening, for watching. Like I said, at the beginning of this episode, last episode, last episode until I get back from maternity leave, that I'll be actively recording. But you will have lots and lots of episodes for episodes a week to listen to for the next 12 weeks. I'll still be on Instagram every now and then. Like I said, I don't know what I'm going to have this baby. It could be tomorrow. It could be in four weeks from now. Who knows? But I'll be around. I just want to take this time, though, to, you know, focus on my family and to get things ready to nest you who have been pregnant. You know that feeling of just needing to nest and get everything

settled. So that's what I'll be doing. Thank you guys so much for your support for being such a wonderful, smart, engaging, thoughtful audience for constantly sending me wonderful stories or interesting stories that you want me to cover. You guys help guide the direction of this podcast so much. If you love this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That means a lot to me. That means a lot to us. And subscribe on YouTube if you haven't already. Thank you guys so much.

We will be back here with an interview on Monday.